Question of the Nineses
by AliceAD
Summary: The Dormouse, March Hare, Mad Hatter and Alice have a conversation about time. QI-Based.


**Fandom: **Alice in Wonderland 2010  
**Genre:** General/Humor  
**Status**: Oneshot/complete

**Series of Rewrites: **category QI  
**Disclaimer:** I do not own any rights of Alice in Wonderland 2010, nor of the BBC show QI. I've only taken the liberty to use th characters of Alice and the texts of QI and mingle them together. It might not be the perfect tea-blend but it was certainly to my taste. I don't profit from any of this.

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**"The Question of Nineses"**

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They were seated along the table which was filled with plates and cups of tea. The mad hatter was sipping his tea elegantly while the dormouse was using her little pin-like sword to attack one of the empty teacups.

"I think this should call for another riddle!" Tarrant suddenly chirped as he sat up straight, his hat almost toppling off his head. Alice looked over at Thackery Earwicket who was chuckling loudly at the hatter's suggestion. "Why not? Why not?" He encouraged his friend. The hatter looked at Alice with a pleading look and she immediately understood that he was waiting for her permission. "Sure, go ahead." She smiled sweetly at him. It was all he needed to hear and a wide smile spread across his face.

"Great!" He lisped and bend forward to the others. With mystery shrouding his words as he spoke he started off with the first riddle that came into mind. "Just stop me or interrupt me when you know." His gruff voice said with a slight accent and his face turned serious for a short instant before he was smiling again. "We all want more of it, some of us keep it better than others, it's invisible…" The March Hare started to chirp like a bird. Tarrant turned his head at him and raised a brow. Excitement was written all over his face. "Yeah?"

Thackery raised his paw and slurred his answer. "Time?"

Tarrant looked impressed by his great friend. "Yes, it's the right answer." Alice clapped her hands whilst smiling brightly. There was no such entertainment as these dear fellows. Tarrant slumped back into his chair. A mysterious smile lingered on his lips. "You know a family I knew sold it."

Mallymkun crossed her little mouse arms in front of her chest and snorted. "Now that is a story I didn't hear of."

Alice leaned closer to the hatter again. "How will you sell time? How could you make a living selling time?" She wondered out loud. The mad hatter still smiled his mysterious smile which he'd always do when telling a riddle or secret. "For four generations." He started and paused to see if everyone was still listening. The march hare, dormouse and small human girl were all silently eyeing him. "It started when the Red Queen came to the throne. Suddenly there was an issue with time. But one smart lady would let you pay to watch her watch. That way she could give you the time, since it was getting more and more important to be on time."

Alice snorted simultaneously with Mallymkun. They both struggled with the thought of the broken watch in the March Hare's pocket and the broken one in the hands of the hatter.

Tarrant ignored the short interruption and continued with his lisping voice. "She would wander around with her pocket watch, which was a very fine pocket watch, and she would once a week put the time right, wander around town and people would pay to have a look at her watch. And she made money giving people the time. Businessmen had a subscription to her and…"

Mallymkun interrupted him before he could continue on his rant. "It sounds very much like a scam. Some sort of euphemism!" She lowered her voice and made a grim face 'What's going on here?' Then she continued in her high pitched voice but ten times as sweet as usual 'He's just looking at my watch, officer.' Everyone around the table watched her with huge eyes. When no one replied she quickly added 'In this dark alley!' Alice and Tarrant seemed to enjoy her little joke and Mallymkun stood proud while they were laughing.

"You'd think, wouldn't you?" Alice acknowledged. Then she turned to the hatter again and tugged at his sleeve. " So people would pay to look at her watch?"

Mallymkun raised her hands and added the quotation mark sign with her fingers as she spoke in a mocking voice. 'Her "watch".' While the others tried not to giggle as loudly as before the hatter continued. "They cornered the market with it."

This raised another question Alice was eager to ask. "And there were only three who did this? One at a time? You'd be lucky to find them!"

The mad hatter shifted in his seat. "Well, that's the thing. People could buy an annual subscription and I guess they would go around and visit them in the same way a sandwich company goes round to a firm." Thackery jumped upon his seat. "Like an alarm clock?" Alice blinked as the words made no sense to her anymore. The hatter feverishly nodded his head. "Yes, yes. They would go around carrying a clock and say it's now exactly this, and the firm would set all their watches by it." Alice blinked again and Mallymkun darted to the middle of the table and cried out. "When did they hour? When did they decide on an hour? When? What was that?"

The hatter blinked.

" Why an hour?" The hare nodded concussively. "Why not just half an hour? And make that an hour?" he cried. Tarrant pondered for a short while and tapped his fingers playfully against his lips. "Because twenty-four is divisible in so many different ways, that's why.." Alice smiled at this.

"It's very factorisable. …" She added.

"It's divisible by two and three and four and six and eight." Tarrant continued and Mallymkun jumped at his face to stop him from talking. Alice shrugged and shook her head.

"Yes, but so is ten, so why not do ten?"

The others froze and gaped at her.

"Do ten?" They all shrieked. Alice felt like she had said a bad thing and quickly looked up at the sky. "No, ten is only divisible by one and two, five and itself." She said hurriedly as to redeem herself.

"Oh, only if you want to ." Tarrant said with a gallant smile on his face.

"That's where twenty-four comes up." Thackery squeaked. Tarrant ignored him and continued talking to Alice in a wise yet soothing voice. "If you go into another dimension you can do and have anything you want." Mallymkun poked his cheek with her sword. "But unfortunately we weren't in another dimension." She stated quite rudely.

"OOOOWWWW." Thackery cried out heartbreakingly and tugged at his own ears before rolling his head on the table and beating his paws dramatically.

"Oh, I'm sorry." Tarrant said and bit his lip. His eyes showed that he pitied the hare and he was contemplating whether he should stand up from his chair and walk over to comfort his friend. But Alice's voice brought him out of his thoughts. " I was wondering, why was it important to divide twenty-four by eight." There was a terrifying silence as even Thackery had stopped beating the table. They all looked at each other.

Then suddenly they all yelled "Yeah!" in unison.

Alice who was fully aware of the answer suggested it as to answer her own question yet again. " They wanted to have as divisible a system as was possible." Tarrant immediately caught her attention when his low voice sounded. "Why wouldn't it then be a hundred? Have hundred? Then you can make it all up to ten."

Mallymkun rolled down his shoulder and into an empty cup on the table. Her pin-like sword was lost during her rolling and the hatter took it in his free hand. Her tiny voice echoed through the cup. "If you want, you can have a plan to decimalise time, if you like."

Thackery raised his paw again. "I'd want that."

Tarrant was already clutching his watch in his hand and held the pin in his other. "That's it," he replied gruffly "I'm going to make my own. I'm going to cross two of these off!" His eyes were fixated on his watch. Somewhere in the background Thackery squeaked 'That's my man!'. Tarrant cleared his throat. "Let's have a vote. Three and eight!"

Alice yelped. " No you can't have one to ten, then you'll never have elevenses ever again."

Tarrant was scratching the digits off of his watch with the use of pin. "No, we'll leave that in."

Mallymkun appeared out of the cup. "Nineses." She cheered happily.

"Nineses? Can you have nineses!" Alice wondered.

Thackery cheered as well ."Nineses!"

Alice turned to Tarrant again. "So in your system, how many hours are in your day?" He smirked at her. "Twenty."

Alice repeated him with a smile. "Twenty hours."

Tarrant cleared his throat again. "Let's keep it nice and simple," he started and grinned at the others, "we will call it a 'horare' or something. Or a 'hoor'."

Mallymkun blinked. "A whore?"

Tarrant's Scottish accent appeared again "A whore! A whore!" His pronunciation of the 'r ' being particularly clear and making the others giggle out loud. "Splendid." Mallymkun remarked pleased. "Time is a whore, I think." She added.

"Why not have Strumpets?" Alice managed to say between her chokes of laughter. Mallymkun exclaimed: "Twenty Strumpets!"

Thackery suddenly seemed the only sane person in the place as he calmly started talking. "It originally was twelve hours because the Babylonians where the first ones too…"

Mallymkun interrupted him. "Yeah, what do they know?"

Alice giggled. "They had a base-twelve counting system."

Tarrant showed his hands. "You have ten fingers and ten toes."

The others nodded in agreement. " Yeah."

He continued. "And then you can count off the bits and sections of time by each one of your digits, couldn't you?"

Mallymkun grumped. "What a way to tell the time."

Thackery looked at Alice. "What time is it?" He gestured wildly with his paws. As they were all counting their fingers Mallymkun managed to speak, though her tongue was hanging slightly out of her mouth because of the concentration on the counting. "One… two… three and a half."

Tarrant turned to Thackery. "Two minutes passed four. What would that be then? That's six."

Alice agreed from the other side of the table. "That's six, yeah."

Mallymkun sat down and had to catch her breath. "Well, good luck, there could be an interesting line in merchandisable metric clocks." Thackery smiled.

"Yes." Tarrant smiled proudly at his companions. "It's the Thackery Earwicket Tea Metric clock."

Thackery looked at him with teary eyes. "Metric clock. Yeah." He looked emotional and pleased. Tarrant seemed pleased as well. "Yeah."

Thackery scratched behind his large ear. "That's fine, that works by me."

Tarrant looked back at his watch and frowned. "Anyway, we've just been an hour on that topic."

"By whose system?" Alice liked to know.

"It's an hour and a bit." Thackery corrected Tarrant.

Mallymkun grinned. "I'll think you find time is quite of a bitch. Especially in Underland."

Alice chirped happily. "That means only one thing… Time to move on."

~END~

AU - I just had to write this after seeing Alice in Wonderland and watching QI last week. I couldn't help but see the Alice characters saying those same words of the panelists. I just felt like sharing this mental image and hope you've enjoyed reading it :3


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